Re: [MinGW-dvlpr] loading user settings

[Keith M. <kei...@us...>]

On Wednesday 17 May 2006 12:47 pm, Earnie Boyd wrote:
> Quoting Gianluca Sforna <gi...@gm...>:
> > Hi,
> > is there a reason why the default /etc/profile in msys lacks
> > something like:
> >
> > if [ -f $HOME/.bashrc ]; then
> >  . $HOME/.bashrc
> > fi
> >
> > so users can customize their environment without messing with the
> > system one?
>
> I don't consider this an appropriate question for this list.

With respect, Earnie, I disagree.  The question Gianluca has posed 
relates to the practicality of inserting additional code into 
/etc/profile; this is a file which we distribute with MSYS.  Therefore, 
the question has implications for the MSYS distribution, which require a 
developers' decision, so I *will* answer on this basis.

Although I know that some, perhaps many, Linux distributions do this, I 
believe it is wrong to add this code to /etc/profile.  I have two reasons 
for this, namely:

1) The decision as to whether or not the commands in $HOME/.bashrc should 
be sourced by a login shell should rightfully be delegated to the user.  
By coding such commands into /etc/profile, the system administrator, or 
worse the distributor, denies the user his right to make this decision.  
While this *may* not create any great inconvenience for the user, it is 
unnecessary, and quite simply, sheer bad manners.

2) Enforcing such a startup action actually *prevents* bash from 
performing it's normal startup initialisation!  $HOME/.bashrc is *not* 
supposed to be read by a login shell; by design, it is intended only to 
be read by secondary shells.  For login shells, the equivalent files are 
$HOME/.bash_profile and $HOME/.profile, and either of these *will* be 
read, as appropriate, without any need for specifying the action in 
/etc/profile.

>  Please ask this question on users list.

Yes, I do agree that there is a place for further discussion of the bash 
startup sequence, particularly in relation to the use of $HOME/.profile, 
$HOME/.bash_profile and $HOME/.bashrc, and that place is not here -- it 
is on one of the users lists, with mingw-msys being my preferred choice.  
I don't have time to expand on this right now, but may get a chance to 
post something there, over the weekend.

Regards,
Keith.